Our values – the Community Kitchen
As a social enterprise, any profits raised at the Community Kitchen support our community cookery activities – including courses for people with learning disabilities, those living on low incomes or people with physical and mental health issues. We also offer discounted hire rates for small community organisations to use our space for their own events.
Our community cookery courses are offered on a pay-by-donation basis and we offer both a concessions rate and a bursary scheme for our evening and weekend classes. We want everyone to experience the benefits of cooking and eating together, regardless of finance, confidence or ability.
We also believe in spending and investing in ways that benefit people, the local community and our wider environment. This includes:
- Signing up to the Brighton Living Wage campaign for all our staff wages
- Ensuring we pay this wage or above to all freelancers or contracted companies (eg our cleaners)
- Recycling all food waste from our classes and events in our on-site composting tumbler
- Promoting plant-based options, and ensuring the majority of our classes have plant-based menus
- Buying high welfare or organic eggs, dairy and meat
- Sourcing fruit and vegetables for our community activities from local suppliers and focusing on seasonal ingredients
- Avoiding plastic packaging for fruit & vegetables where possible
- Renting space within a community building rather than a commercial premises
- Avoiding unnecessary printing but using recycled paper and local printers where needed
- Paying travel and meal expenses for volunteers who support our activities
- Ensuring equality of access to our activities for people with disabilities or from equalities groups – through investing in physical access as well as ensuring staff are trained to adapt and support all people
Other cookery schools in the Southeast charge an average of £75-100 for a 3-hour lesson. We are proud to be able to offer most of our classes below this rate whilst investing in high quality ingredients, skilled staff and ethical choices.
You may see a booking fee on some of our event tickets – these fees go to our ticketing provider to cover payment processing, online sales and related services which we we need to run our cookery classes and events.
Feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about any of the above and thank you for supporting the Community Kitchen.